Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Logan Paul and the Suicide Contagion effect

Alex SchadenbergExecutive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Newsweek recently published an excellent article by Joseph Frankel concerning the suicide contagion effect. The article is based on the video that Logan Paul posted on Youtube that showed the body of a Japanese man who died by suicide. The video achieved 6 million views before Youtube removed the posting. The Newsweek article examines the question: Is Suicide Contagious?

According to Frankel, the suicide contagion effect has been proven by many studies.

“Even though people do still wonder how a behavior as serious as suicide can be contagious, there are consistent results from so many studies that indicate that following a media story, suicide rates go up,” Madelyn Gould, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who studies suicide risk and prevention, told Newsweek. Gould also points out this is "far from the first example of the dangers of amplifying stories of suicide."

And it’s far from the first time that media outlets have had to reckon with the question of suicide contagion: the phenomenon of increased risk of suicide after exposure to suicide, including depictions of or reporting on suicide in the media. Last May, the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why featured a graphic scene depicting a character’s suicide. The show sparked several articles examining whether the series would stoke the effect, along with a research study in JAMA Internal Medicine showing Google searches for terms related to suicidal thoughts spiked after the show’s release.

Frankel explains the history of the suicide contagion effect:

The 1772 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther tells the story of a young man who kills himself after a failed romance. It was reportedly banned in several cities for fear that young people in Europe, many of whom mimicked the protagonist’s style of dress, would take their own lives as well. This phenomenon has been dubbed the Werther effect, a term that researchers have adopted over a century after the book’s publication.

The Werther effect is a touchstone in research and writing about suicide. But, researchers have also found a flipside in the the “Papageno effect”: reported stories that focus on people who have suicidal thoughts, and ultimately find ways of coping and surviving were associated with a decrease in the suicide rate.